• by Masha Geller , August 14, 2002

Before I get to the newsiest item of the day, an invitation:

As you may remember, last year MediaPost hosted a Forecast conference around time of year, where about a hundred of the industry’s leading minds gathered to talk about the most pressing issues facing the online advertising industry and to issue a forecast for the future. Not surprisingly, (a bit of blatant self-promotion here, if I may) many of their predictions turned out to be right and since the event was so successful we decided to do it again. So take out your Palm Pilots and write down the date:

Forecast 2003, September 26, The Yale Club, NYC
All the details are here: https://www.mediapost.com/forecast.

Space is already very limited, so sign up soon and I hope to see you there!

Now, on with the show. When it comes to the web, it’s safe to say that children are really our future. Nielsen//NetRatings reported this week that one out of every five kids and teens who have online access, or nearly 20% of the overall active Internet population, logged online from home in July 2002. That’s 20 million surfers ages 2-17 who accessed the Web last month, spending more than nine hours online and initiating an average of 16 sessions.

Also, NetRatings says that among this segment of the population, instant messaging applications drew 11.5 million kids and teens to the Web, as young surfers comprised nearly a quarter of the total at-home instant messaging population.

As NetRatings’ director and principal analyst T.S. Kelly said, "Young surfers are generally more technologically savvy as compared to other age groups, and have adopted the use of the Internet as part of their daily activities at home as well as in school."

Why should you care? As Kelly said, “while the lack of a credit card may hinder immediate participation in e-commerce by kids and teens, their sheer size represents a unique opportunity for marketers to relay their branding messages and develop loyalty among future online buyers."